Snow Like Ash
by moonlight gal
Summary: She'd remembered her unconditional love for snow, even when everything else was forgotten. How she'd believed in its immortality. How, perhaps, she still believed. C.C-centric


**Snow Like Ash**

Ever since the distant years of childhood, I'd always loved snow.

Even now, when those years of childhood have become nothing more than fleeting memories at best, and forgotten, broken pieces of a surreal-seeming dream at worst, I can still remember- faintly, very faintly- my unexplainable love for the season of winter. I remember the puzzled faces of friends, family, and acquaintances alike. I remember my parents- blurred, forgettable faces, they had- shaking their heads in disapproval and exasperation. I remember the vague thud of my little footsteps on the mounds of pure, untainted snow. I remember my mother's panicked shrieks as I rushed outside.

I remember the fragile flakes falling from the unending sky. I remember looking up at them from wide, innocent eyes-_ has the innocence been forgotten as well, I wonder_?- and believing, with the naivete that only a child could possess, that they were the delicate, chipped pieces of the stars I'd see at night, spread out on the velvet blanket of midnight , so perfectly, like the finest jewels in God's possession. I remember holding them in my small palm, wanting desperately to hold onto them forever. To eternally store the abandoned pieces of those beautiful stars. To keep them all to myself, never letting anybody take them away from me.

_God gave them to me, _I would argue vehemently, _He told me to take care of them. Why should I give them away to anybody?_

Yes. Amongst the blurred faces, the cacophony of indecipherable voices, the long-forgotten innocence, I still remember. I remember my awe, my amazement, my pure, unwavering belief that the snow falling was nothing less than Divinity in motion. My belief that those pieces of stars would never melt. I believed, and believed, and believed. Even after I witnessed them scorching away, I believed. _Next time, they'll stay, _I believed.

Until next time never came.

My unconditional love for the white snow- so untainted, so pure, so untouchable, so _beautiful- _died away slowly. Fading, fading, fading, slowly, slowly, slowly.

Painfully slowly, in fact.

Simply because when something attached to your soul dies away, it pulls away a piece of your soul with it. Needless to say, when that piece is snatched away, it leaves you stumbling and fumbling around in the suffocating darkness, reaching out desperately, groping around for something you _know _you won't find.

Simply because it hurts.

When it dies away slowly, it hurts. Because it gets taken away so, so slowly. It gets snatched away- piece by piece by piece, with no intervals in between. No intervals for you to cry, to scream, to plead. Nothing. Every rip hurts, but it leaves no time for tears until the next piece is torn away. It hurts. _It hurts so much._

Perhaps that's why. After ever piece is taken away, and the excruciating pain turns into an unnoticeable, dull throbbing at the back of your mind, it's gradually replaced by an odd numbness. Or a better word, maybe, would be nothingness. Nothing remains. Everything is forgotten. Only the pain is remembered, and when the throbbing reminder fades away as well, _nothing _remains. Purely nothing.

But I still remembered. I remembered the snow. Beautiful, beautiful snow. Yes, my love for it _had _died away- I looked _through _it rather than _at _it now- but it was still so _beautiful. _So white, and that white was unchangeable. It melted away, but it was unchangeable.

I'd always hated change, hadn't I?

Maybe, even now, I believe. Is the sun still scorching the snow away? Is it changing? Is the world burning? Is it?

Where are the ashes? I don't see the ashes.

_They're everywhere. Can't you see them? They're in front of you. Everything has been burned down to ashes. They're everywhere. Look at them. The ashes._

But no matter how many times that little voice persistently whispers, murmurs, _screams _even, I never see them. Maybe because I still believe.

_Everything has been burned down._

I don't see anything. Nothing except blindingly white snow. I can't see ashes. I can't see blurred faces. I can't hear inseparable voices mingling together.

_The snow has already melted. All their voices have been burned away. All their faces have been burned down._

Where are their scars, I wonder? Why can't I see their scars?

_You've been burned as well, haven't you?_

Simply because, in the end, all you can do is pretend that the ashes are snow. _Believing_, I suppose, was never the right word for it.

_Because everything is burned down eventually. Always._

**Owari**


End file.
